Category Archives: Genealogical Sources

The Irish website, www.irishgenealogy.ie has extended the civil registration records available on their free website.Non-Catholic marriages in Ireland were registered from April 1845, while these are largely Church of Ireland and Presbyterian marriages, marriages in registry offices and mixed marriages that took place outside of the Roman Catholic church

I was surprised to discover a reference to the surname Christmas in Ireland while searching the early Grantor Indexes in the Registry of Deeds in Dublin, and decided to do a little digging.Origins of the Surname ChristmasThe general consensus from various surname dictionaries is that the name originated as a birth forename for someone born at Christmas,

Tracing the Power family for the Paul Merton episode of Who Do You Think You Are? was quite a challenge, not least because Power is one of the most common surnames in Co. Waterford. Paul’s mother’s maiden name was Power. At the time of Griffith’s Valuation), a land survey taken in the 1850s there were over 3000 Power households found in Ireland,

The National Archives of Ireland, in partnership with the Genealogical Society of Utah, published a database of the Tithe Applotment Books online on their Genealogy Website. The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) have also released images of the Tithe Applotment Books for Northern Ireland on their website. Find out more about access

Just before the Index of Irish Wills 1484-1858 was published I was working with the editorial team. One of my tasks was to search through the original database for possible errors in the transcription of names. If you order all of the entries alphabetically it is easy to see where anomalous names turn up. In this instance, it was not anomalous, but

In the recent episode of Who Do You Think You Are? for Irish television, Pat Shortt discovered an ancestor accused of the murder of his landlord, Mr. Bradshaw of Philipstown House. While some details of the murder were found in the local press, it was the police file of the investigation into the murder that revealed the complex story of the Bradshaws,

In a recent Irish episode of Who Do You Think You Are? singer and songwriter Damien Dempsey discovered that his maternal ancestor, Frederick Bridgeman, was granted Freedom of the city of Dublin in 1841.Freemen of the City of DublinIn a description on the website of the Dublin City Library and Archives, which hosts a database of records for freemen of

While researching a collection of estate papers for the Farnham Estate in Newtownbarry in Co. Wexford for the late 18th and early 19th century I came across an intriguing document. The estate records were found in the National Library of Ireland and in Ms. 8527 (5), a collection of drafts and memoranda of legal documents concerning the Newtownbarry

Much of the focus of our research for the WDYTYA Molly Shannon episode was to try and understand the relationship between her ancestors, the Cattigan family, and their landlords, the Pikes. An article discovered in the Connaught Telegraph (9th February 1889), published on the Irish News Archive, reported that the local relieving officer presented

In a recent search for the second marriage of a couple in Dublin city I noticed an issue at www.irishgenealogy.ieThe subject of my search was a man named John Patrick Nolan. John Patrick Nolan went by both John Nolan and Patrick Nolan, which was the first obstacle in my search. In 1901 John Nolan was residing with his first wife, Margaret in Bellevue